SMP Skateboard Park Quest

19 Sep 08 (Dad & Eric)

Shanghai has what it professes to be “the largest skateboard park in the world.” Located somewhere on the far side of town, nowhere near a subway stop, it’s exact position is annoyingly illusive. With a day off from school, I suggested to Eric that he and I try to find this mysterious isle of recreation.

So, anticipating an early start to our excursion, Eric downloaded and printed out the physical address of the park last evening. We planned on hitting Decathlon (the local sporting good store) as it opened to get a skateboard, then have our driver take us to the park; Easy enough. Oh, how the best layed plans can go to h*** in a handbag!

Due to some juvenile lolley-gagging, it was after 10:00AM before we ever got going. Then the boards offered at Decathlon, as it turns out, weren’t exactly what Eric had in mind so we left without purchasing one (a decision which later came back to haunt us). We did, however, score a business card that read “SMP Skate Park”, as well as an address, albeit in Chinese characters, that gave us concrete directions to the park. So we thought.

Our search for a board led us to some dark, antiquated, underground market in the older part of town (Puxi). The directions to a board shop, (again written in Chinese Mandarin characters) were found on-line. They proved to be antiquated as well, as when we finally found the store we sought, or at least the location identified by the address, it (the shop) had obviously changed hands and now only sold knock-off Disney paraphernalia.

Our driver was patient with us and circled the block several times while we searched the catacombs of the underground market. And even upon our empty handed return, took us to two different department stores, which as it turned out, sold sports apparel, but no equipment. One store had a skateboard on a shelf as a display, but would not part with it. Frustrated with us and needing to get across town to pick up Becky he abandoned us on Nanjing road, a place where one can typically find about any piece of crap he or she might desire; less a skateboard!

After a quick lunch, Eric and I decided that we should just go on out to the skate park. If nothing else, we can figure out where it is. And reasoned that if there is a park that size, there should be a shop of some sort as well. As we jumped on the subway heading out to where we had seen the park on Google Earth, we realized that we had left the directions (not to mention our city map) in the van with our driver. No problem; we had the card that I had scored at Decathlon earlier in the day! We had what we needed, right? Wrong!

As we got close to where we thought would likely be the closest stop to the park, we showed the card to a young person and asked if he knew how to get to the venue. He indicated that we needed to get off the train at that specific stop. I guessed that we were where we needed to be. We got off the train and followed him over to a map on the wall of the station where he began pointing to the area near the Decathlon sporting goods store. It turns out the card that I picked up at the store was not for the park after all, but rather for a board shop back near our apartment!It was now approaching 5:00 PM and we were no closer to finding the park than we were when we began our boondoggle. Eric needed to be home by 6:00 to get ready for a scout campout, so we abandoned our quest and bolted for home.